


Survivors

by JenCforCarolina



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Death, Gen, Gore, Hunter Vanguard, destiny awoken, destiny exo, destiny warlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 04:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6179575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenCforCarolina/pseuds/JenCforCarolina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stars have brilliant deaths, large explosions given a wonderful name. Men are granted nothing so glorious.<br/>A story of survivors outside the walls of the Last City.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Find it on Tumblr](http://jencforcarolina.tumblr.com/post/113421817073/survivors)

He kissed Cahaya and told her to run.

He would never forget her pale blue face, like a sharp winter’s sky. Hair like icicles, tinted gold in the sunset. Eyes like magical pearls he had heard tales of, tales twined with stories of the seas.

Many times their party had split, the men taking up arms and confronting their pursuers, but this time there was extra weight on Adi’s soul. He could feel it in the songs of the universe. This time it was dark, they were low on ammo. They were tired, hungry, cold. They were not prepared to fight tonight. Not all of them would survive.

Ejiro kissed his mother, hugged his kids. His son was the youngest of the group, too young to even be able to protect them. So Cahaya took their best gun. Adi’s beautiful delicate wife with a Russian rifle in her hands and a bag half her weight on her back. He longed for the days when they were young in the town and the terrifying darkness outside was kept at bay by the walls. The dreams almost consumed him.

“Adi! Ejiro!” Ander, the former sheriff was getting impatient. “We must hurry to meet them. Give the women and children time to run.”

Ander had lost his family long ago. He coped by throwing himself into the fates, with a wild wish to give his life for the others. He had confided as much in the other men once. Thankfully he had not yet been given the opportunity. Adi feared he would get his chance tonight.

Cahaya slung the rifle over her shoulder. Took Ejiro’s daughter by one hand and the rifle’s grip by the other. She gave Adi a long grim stare. Perhaps she didn’t want to run, perhaps she would rather fight.

Perhaps she felt it too.

She did not speak to him but swept away, the old woman and two children in her wake. They would head for the distant peak and wait at its base. They were supposed to wait only a day. He knew they would wait forever.

He turned his back on his love and looked to the stars for strength.

“Adi.” Ejiro’s hand on his shoulder. The man was dark as the night they lingered in, his perfect teeth behind a hesitant smile his own sparkling stars.

Ejiro might survive, he thought, using logic to calm his nerves. He must buy as much time as he could. He must be calm and prepared to most efficiently rip through their enemies with his rusted machete and the precious hand canon rounds he had. Ejiro had skin of night while Adi himself glowed like dawn. Ander did not glow as he but his grimy skin was still light and seemed to absorb the rays of moonlight. His face was like a beacon, looking down upon the other two men.

Ejiro could maybe hide from the Fallen. But he would not.

He did not.

Not ten minutes later, ten minutes back down the road they came from, an invisible vandal caught him from behind, pierced him on a blade, and his blood pooled out like liquid night.

Adi was closest and unloaded three hand cannon rounds into the beast’s flickering, semi-transparent skull. Its body returned to the flesh from whatever mystical state granted it’s stealth.

Its corpse dropped over Ejiro’s.

“Fool.” Ander spat, the harshest whisper imaginable. And Adi knew he was a fool because now the rest of the ghost vandal’s band knew where they were.

A barked order from down the road, crisp, authoritative. An officer, no doubt. They had seen their kind once before, as they burst through the gates of the town and over the walls, leading their vandals in charges. Taller Fallen they were, larger, more decorated than their subjects. He had known that day, the first time that he had laid eyes on a Captain, he would not survive a second encounter. He prayed to the stars that Cahaya had not heard his shots. Prayed she would not return for him. Prayed she kept running. He could bear himself dying as long as she would live.

Ander grabbed him roughly and drew him from the path, into the thickest trees. They stumbled on thorns and branches. Cover revealed itself in a swath of fallen trees, barely within sight of the path. Adi pretended the trunks were great walls, knelt behind them and looked back at the path, imagining it was a far away battlefield. It was easy, for even less starlight filtered into the thick forest, making the once dusky path glow like illuminated water. He reloaded his hand cannon, aimed at the corpses of his friend and enemy. Imagined he was an archer atop the walls of his castle, centuries and centuries ago. None of this was real, those bodies were a formation of rocks. These trees in his line of sight towering mountains. his mind worked and worked and repressed the fear until he believed it, he almost believed it.

Then the Captain strolled up to his formation of rocks and kicked them, the upper boulders tumbling down, revealing Ejiro’s body. A sharp crack from the leader’s weapon and it exploded, charged shrapnel shredding the flesh. The gore glistened for a second in the moonlight.

The Captain turned its head to the woods and sniffed the air. Adi closed his eyes for a moment, dread making his entire body feel weighted, as if he were drowning in the air.

Ander’s hand brushed his side, reassuring. He turned to look at the other and stared into dead eyes. A dreg’s blade shoved through his back, his heart. It came out the front between the fourth and fifth ribs.

Adi was no fool this time. He took hold of his machete and hacked it through the dreg’s windpipe. It made a dull thwack of metal on flesh, and the breath hissed out of it’s body. He dropped into a couch in time with the corpse, taking cover as the Captain fired it’s flaming shotgun rounds at him. He tucked his hand cannon barrel in the back of his pants, snatched Ander’s shotgun. He tried to sliced off the other man’s belt, intending to take the pockets of spare ammo kept on it.

No time, a vandal was on top of him, howling. He was found, no need for stealth any longer. He fired the shotgun into the devil’s chest, killing it instantly. Five shots more before he had to reload. One for the dregs leapt over the logs. Two for the shank that spun into view next- his first shot had missed, and he cursed himself for it. A slight pause in the fallen assault, and he thought maybe he had time to reload, but then a gurgling sound arose that made his blood chill. Invisible ones. He laid the shotgun down and took the hand cannon in his right hand. Machete in his left. Breathing heavy, breathing hard. Trying to calm down so he could hear their steps.

Rifle fire spattered the space in front of him. Bullets pounded into an invisible form. It screamed, fell. Adi sat stunned. The sounds of the gun revealed it was not Fallen, human, familiar. Like the one his wife held…

“Cahaya no! Cahaya run!” Panic welled in his veins, his throat. He longed to see her face but he feared it as well.

Eyes turned on him in the nighttime gloom. Cold, calculating green eyes. Not his pearls. Not his sunset snow, his winter sky.

White face, moonlight face, brighter than even Ander’s. Bright as pure white paint because that is what it was, white paint on dark metal. And the green eyes.

The being raised its rifle and fired over Adi’s shoulder. The bullets were close to his face, so close he felt the warmth on his cheek. They left a pounding ring in his ears. A body hit the dirt behind him.

The eyes considered him again, as if giving him a chance. Before he had time to decide how to respond they had given up on him, turning to face the threats instead.

Adi hardened his jaw and reached for the shotgun. He ducked and reloaded it as the being cracked off more shots in the direction of the Captain. He looked up over the log again, aimed at the closest oncoming dreg, only for it to be felled by his rescuer. Again and again the man, he assumed it was a man, dropped the enemies. The Fallen never even got close enough for his shotgun, Ander’s shotgun, to be effective. He grabbed his old hand cannon again instead, something with a bit of range on it at least. He rose over the logs to aim.

Pain in his shoulder, searing, more awful than anything he had ever imagined. He thought a star had exploded in his heart. It was almost a star, he realized. A vandal had pegged him with a bolt of plasma. He didn’t have to look to realize it was fatal. He felt it in the song of the universe. He reached out a hand to the stranger beside him. His muscles failed and he fell backwards into the leaves. Gasping, choking, any sound to get the thing’s attention. He got it, a flickering gaze while it crouched and reloaded.

“Save my wife.” The noise of his voice was a single breath, his last. He hoped the other had even heard it. As the blackness rose in his mind he focused on her, stretched out his arm to her, hoped the stranger would find her. Protect her.

He would see her from the stars.


	2. Chapter 2

The Awoken man died. Kamon hadn’t expected it to die. He lay down on the earth and belly crawled to the body, inspecting the wound. Deeper than it had first appeared, lower too. Yes. Dead.

Kamon-9 logged a secondary objective. Primary would be killing the Captain. Secondary would be the man’s dying wish. A fellow survivor deserved as much.

A Vandal shouted behind him, a fatal mistake as Kamon snatched the dead man’s machete and whipped it into the beast’s neck, ether sups splitting with a hiss.

He was standing now, above the cover of the logs. The Captain looked at him, looked at his face and his eyes. Kamon wasn’t one to hide, couldn’t hide, even if he wanted to. His engineers had made sure of that.

The Captain sniffed cockily before calling his underlings to action. Kamon took the opportunity to breathe, metaphorically at least. One Captain, three Vandals, one dead so make it two. Four Shanks, four Dregs. Easy.

Three clips left on the rifle, six rounds in the handcannon tucked in the back of his belt. Should be plenty. He had a knife in his boot in case it wasn’t.

Still… he had no idea how much spare ammunition the two dead men at his feet had, or where and when he would be able to get more. No point wasting. He pulled algorithms from his recent thoughts, recalculated the exact positions of the enemies around him, judging distance based on the sounds of their footsteps, their quiet ether sups, the whirring of the Shanks’ drives.

He was moving before the Captain uttered it’s last garbled syllable.

He grabbed the Dreg nearest him by the neck, rammed his durasteel knee into its ribs. Something inside it shattered, he felt it give. He tossed it aside and put a single shot through its temple, a feat of extreme control and precision for a bullet coming from an auto rifle.

Two of the Dreg’s brethren rushed him, snarling vows of revenge. The closer one was larger than the rest, stronger. He slammed the butt of the rifle into the skull of that one first, ducking below the blades of the other. The larger one crumpled, so he fired on the second, bullets tracking down from the collar blade to the abdomen. Less than half the clip was left. No time to reload.

Two Shanks came next, spitting tiny balls of arc energy from their canons. He let one hand fall from the rifle, and with it snatched up his knife. Shanks didn’t take bullets, Shanks were simple. A well placed rock could down one, their only danger was when they fired back. He could see their targeting in their eyes though, recognized it. He sidestepped most of the shots, knew a few would hit, expected them and braced. Kamon’s subroutines checked for damage to vitals while he brought the knife into the glass front of the closest Shank. They decided if he could swing a knife like that he probably hadn’t taken too much damage. His subroutines had some sass. He liked them that way. Kept things lively.

He shattered the face of the other Shank and stepped aside as it crashed and exploded, flinging little bits of shrapnel around him. They scratched against his clothes, he would have to check for damage later.

The Fallen stopped coming. He had left an impression. They waited for him now. Even the Captain had shifted so there was a tree partially in between himself and Kamon. It was like an invitation for him to decide the outcome of the battle now.

He graciously accepted.

Stowing the knife and rifle, he grabbed the handcanon from the small of his back. Six shots, five targets. Easy.

Shot one met a Shank, blew it apart. Kamon skirted the logs at his feet, headed for the two Vandals behind trees to his left, found only one.

He shot it dead, bullet to the throat, and put his back to a tree, searching for the other. It had no doubt gone invisible. Would it attack soon or wait, hoping he had forgotten it? Should he take the chance to shoot the two remaining Dregs, or wait out the Vandal?

He made his choice to the song of the Vandal’s blade, spinning right as the knife dug itself into the tree that had been his cover. He put two shots into this one, praying he hit something vital. He did, and the cloaking dropped with the corpse.

Captain, roaring to his right, a Shank and two Dregs, somewhere behind him. He would prefer to handle the lesser enemies first…but he wasn’t the one to decide anymore.

The Captain charged through the undergrowth, finally fed up with the pest murdering its minions.  
Two shots went into the shields. Had the shield not been there they would have gone into its head. His handcanon was spent. He tossed it aside in favor of the rifle slung over his shoulder, backpedaling as he grabbed it to keep distance from his target. He unloaded what was left of the clip. It tore through the shields, but the last shots that should have been deadly lodged in the armor of his assailant instead. It was enough to make the Captain falter, and in those few moments Kamon ran for the largest trunk, took cover behind it, reloading without looking. A whirring to his left revealed the other Shank, which he dispatched quickly but with more shots than it should have taken. His subs unhelpfully noted the overkill and he fought the small flutter of frustration that rose from that.

Pause. Think. Listen. The Captain paced, slower, behind him to the right. It was wounded but its shields would return quickly. It wasn’t sure exactly which tree he hid behind, and it couldn’t smell him, him made of metal not flesh, so it was checking every feasible trunk. That gave him a few seconds more. The two remaining Dregs whispered to his left, back at the fallen logs the bodies of the men lay behind.

Plan: shoot the Dregs, swap for a fresh clip, his last, kill the Captain.

Easy.

He sprinted in a flurry of dead leaves from the forest floor, made for the Dregs. Saw the first, shot in the direction of its abdomen. Missed at first but walked the shots up its body, getting a few in its neck. The other rose up from where it had been crouched over the body of one of its comrades. He unloaded nearly the rest of the clip into that one’s chestplate until it went down on top of the other.

He dove over the logs as fire from the Captain’s shrapnel launcher sounded. Some shards caught him in the back, his subs warned him of danger, possible lasting injury, but he was still moving, nothing had stopped functioning. Not yet.

He swapped the almost spent clip for the fresh one, allowed a half second pause to be thankful for how perfectly the plan had gone so far, thankful for how well it had worked.

He turned and poked only his head and rifle over the logs, sighted the Captain and emptied the clip.

It died.

The bullets dropped the already weakened shield and tore through the armor, one after another. Some missed, but more did not, and finally the beast fell.

He strode over to it, knife pulled from his boot and raised slightly, just in case, just in case it lived.

The life hissed out of the Captain like a shattered ether sup capsule. It was over. He assumed it was over.

Which is why he was surprised when he felt an impact at the base of his skull. His subs screamed FATALITY and everything around him vanished into white.


	3. Chapter 3

Ice, wind, snow. He trudged through it, moving quickly, kinetic generators keeping his body at operating temperature. Power from primary batteries were routed from temperature regulation to more essential functions. Target acquisition, trajectory calculations. His mind worked and worked, and it felt good. He enjoyed it, enjoyed being good, knowing he was moving well, making good progress. He had a weapon in his hands, no idea where he got it but he had it. That was good.

Objective was up ahead on the hill. He could see it, somewhat. It was blurred from total sight by the snow. But it was there, he knew it was there. It was always there.

The first of the army descended upon him. He leveled his rifle at the awoken man rushing at him.

Awoken man. Did he know this one? He did.

The army froze, the snowflakes froze, everything held in place.

He knew the man. He knew all the men though, all the men and women. This one was not special…

The man asked him to save his wife.

He had intended to, he still intended to. Why was he here not there? Because intent was not enough to override programming…or was it?

The storm resumed. The man charged him. Kamon dropped his rifle, threw open his arms and allowed himself to die.

* * *

Objective was up ahead on the hill. He could see it, somewhat. It was blurred from total sight by the snow. But it was there, he knew it was there.

The Awoken man he knew charged him. Kamon allowed himself to die.

Again.

And again.

And again.

He had a woman to find. An objective HE had made, not lingering ones from times he couldn’t remember. When you lived day by day, objective to objective, the little-big things like that were important. Thinking for yourself. Asking why. Little simple things that mattered more than anything else.

Like why was he always here? Every time he went dormant on Earth, every time he shut down functions to rest, allow the subroutines time to dump their cache, he was here. And every time he was awoken, for he could not consciously wake himself, he had no memory of this place.

Another death interrupted his train of thought.

The Awoken man was back again with his wordless, emotionless attack.

What was his objective? Not the one on the hill, his objective. Primary was kill the Captain. He had done that. Secondary was save the Awoken wife. He would do that. It was time to do that.

Do that Kamon. Do it. Why weren’t you doing it?

_You died._

The glowing blue face was no longer a face. It was a singular eye, surrounded by a sectioned cube, its parts orbiting the ball.

_But that can be remedied._

Around him the world vanished. Or reappeared. He wasn’t sure.

The cube-eye remained.

A shriek of alarm from his left. He whipped around and punched the startled Dreg in the face. Grabbed it’s jaw and yanked it down onto his knee. It’s skull shattered.

He grabbed his knife and drove it through the Dreg’s windpipe, just in case.

His subs replayed the battle and acknowledged this was the larger Dreg he had fought earlier, probably stronger than those he was used to. The blow from his rifle had only knocked it unconscious, not killed it. And thus, when his back was turned, it had taken the opportunity and killed him. He recalculated the minimum force required and archived the data, all in the time it took to retract the blade from the body.

“Brutal.”

Kamon returned his attention to the floating eye that was evidently not a remnant from his dreams.

It’s eye rotated, looking him over. Then it spoke.

“You are bewildered? Confused?” So the thing read throat lights. A second glance and he understood how. Its own eye glowed in a similar manner to an Exo’s, right now reading caution and poorly concealed relief.

“You are relieved. Why?” He challenged it with questions of his own.

“Yes! Very much so!” It gave up hiding, and caution gave way to elation. Its entire tiny body shook with excitement. It couldn’t seem to hold still, bobbing up and down. “I have found you at last! I wasn’t entirely sure at first but now I know for certain it is you! You are my Guardian.”

“I have no record of this… assignment.” As if he would listen to those old pre-programed orders anyway.

“There was no one to assign it but fate itself. Our light harmonizes, and so we are bound. I am your Ghost and you are my Guardian.” Devotion flickered its way into the thing’s eye. Kamon was incredibly uncomfortable, but tried not to let the sensation reach his lights.

“And… I don’t get a choice in this matter?”

The Ghost deflated visibly, its parts moving separately from the ball. “I…I had hoped to give you a choice of sorts. Admittedly, I have been… kind of…following you. For a few days now…”

Kamon didn’t know what unsettled him more, that confession or the fact he had not noticed.

“I truly did want to introduce myself first. I was just a bit nervous. Syncing with a living Guardian is rare and rumored to be difficult. I was unsure if you were truly my Guardian, and if so, exactly how to go about the process of Light infusion. But then you died, and with that the opportunity presented itself! I revived you the moment the Dreg turned its back.”

“Died.” He parroted. “As in… dead?”

“Yes. That’s the usual way a Ghost finds their Guardian. Some resurrect corpses hundreds of years old. You’re a very lucky, very unusual case. You were only dead for a few minutes.”

Lucky. Lucky to have died. Right.

He turned and walked towards the road, out of the woods. The Ghost made a little noise of surprise and concern and followed. Whatever mechanics that made it float hummed ever so quietly, almost undetectable.

“Um, where are we going?” It asked. Its lights were insistently flashing ‘wrong, bad’ but it kept its eye cast down submissively.

Kamon did not respond but looked up at the stars. Angled himself true north and compared what he saw to what his subs thought he should see. His internal clock said 0148 hours. His archives knew what the night sky was supposed to look like from this position at that time.

And the stars were off.

Only a bit, a few degrees, more for some than for others. They didn’t match his clock though, and that could only mean one thing, that it had stopped.

His clock did not stop. Not unless he died. So at least some of Ghost’s story was true.

He ran simulations, watched the stars move in his mind, move to where they were now.

The time it would have taken for them to drift that far was 4 minutes and 1.789472 seconds.

“A few minutes?” He turned his head to face it. “How much is a few?”

It bobbed in a motion uncannily akin to a shrug. “Just under four minutes.”

His throat lights must have given away his suspicious note of the discrepancies because the Ghost hurriedly added, “I’m sure your records are more exact than mine. What with delayed reaction times and the like.”

“Right.” Kamon muttered, unconvinced.

He stalked away from the Ghost- it just kept following him- there was a lump, a pair of corpses in the road. A Vandal’s body laid over a dark skinned human. Kamon rolled them over patted at the man’s pockets. Found nothing. A cleaver, evidently the man’s weapon, lay nearby. It hadn’t helped him much.

He headed back to the bodies in the woods. The Fallen weren’t really worth searching, their weapons seemed to grow useless in his hands. They had a dark aura about them that he suspected was the reason for their specific functionality.

There was still a human and the awoken man though, the one who had given him his mission. His subs insisted he get on with that. He told them he was getting to that, but he was going to look for ammo first. It pleased him to find more hand cannon rounds on the human, and a few shotgun shells tucked in the folds of the awoken man’s cloak. Neither had carried a rifle like his. He would have to wait a while to reload that.

He strung the rifle over his shoulder with a length of cord. The awoken man was wearing a makeshift holster for the hand cannon. He worked the buckles, trying to take it off without disturbing the corpse too badly. He acknowledged that trying to be gentle with a dead man wasn’t a very pragmatic way of thinking, but his human designers had insisted on implementing morality and ethics protocols. Apparently an apprehension of looting dead bodies had been included there.

The Ghost still hovered near, uneasy about something. Kamon deftly ignored it, finally wresting the holster free.

“Have you any other questions? I was always told Guardians asked a lot of questions after their first rez. I assumed curiosity was part of the blueprint.”

Yes, he had questions, lots now after that little comment. The sly bastard had probably worded that gem specifically to pique his curiosity. He would not be indulging it on principle just for that.

It seemed harmless enough though. Maybe he would venture to ask some questions later. For now, he had a mission to get on with. He clamped the holster to his own leg, found he had to loosen it.

Rifle, hand cannon, shotgun. All belongings accounted for. He shrugged his cloak so the fabric would fall into a more comfortable position. He had adopted unnecessary clothing an effort to hide his conspicuous white body. It worked fairly well.

The Ghost spun around him. It tried to scan the material at his shoulders but Kamon swatted it away before it could make much progress.

“I can make you better armor.” It offered. “Streamline the cloak.”

“Don’t touch my casings.” He snapped. “And don’t touch my cloak.”

The Ghost seemed amused. “Ah you’re a hunter at heart. And I did not mean your metal skin- though I can alter that as well if you ever wish to- I meant body armor, to be worn. What you have on now isn’t very substantial. Could be what led to your death.”

“My death was a miscalculation. It won’t happen again.”

“No, I’m sure you are wiser because of it, but there are minions of darkness in this system you can’t imagine. That’s what I’m here for, should you ever again miscalculate a challenge, I’ll bring you right back. As long as it is within my power.”

Kamon bit back questions. He could get his answers just by letting the thing talk. Don’t let it have the power of knowing he was curious.

“So? Armor?” It’s geometry spun again in anticipation. It’s eagerness was oddly humorous.

“Fine.” He relented. If it was a trick he would merely shoot the thing, helpful or not.

He stood awkwardly relaxed, somewhat unsure how the tiny thing was going to make anything, maybe it had tiny arms folded up in those pyramids, like assembly line robots.

It floated up to his arm and began scanning, for dimensions maybe, he assumed at first. But then a blueish white light seemed to burn away his glove.

“Hey!” He yelped. “I liked those!”

“Relax.” The Ghost said, “You can have them back. But they really aren’t functional. I’m just making modifications…”

The light was back, and his gloves rematerialized, tighter, more fitted, and with grips on the palms and a thin armored plate on the back.

He tried to marvel at it without showing too much awe, and it ended up as just staring at his hand. The Ghost took it as approval and moved onto the rest of his arm, working faster. His plain jacket was rewoven as some kind of fabric, light and stretchy but with an air of strength. His pants were remade with the same fabric, and a belt and chest plate materialized from nowhere. His boots were repaired and thin armor plating added to his toes, shins and knees.

The ghost zipped up behind his head, and when he went to follow it with his gaze, his optical sensors felt dulled for a moment. A quick analysis through his subs revealed a hood resting on his head.

The Ghost settled in front of him, lights dimmed shyly. “I hope I wasn’t out of line adding that, it’s a signature Hunter style. I didn’t mess with any other part of the cloak.” It said hurriedly.

Kamon fiddled with the way the hood rested over his head. There was actually nothing’s wrong with it. It was rather pleasant, and helped to mask the only part of his glaringly light body paint to show.

“I’ll deal with it.” He said. “Helps with the white.”

“Ah, to hide the face. I’ve got just the thing for that.” Out of thin air a helmet materialized. Kamon caught it, turned it over in his hands. It was charcoal and greys, all dark. Ghost blinked expectantly at him.

He shrugged his new hood off with a nod, and settled the helmet on his head. It sealed automatically with his new armor’s collar. He strained to find something to complain about but could find nothing. It actually had more sensors than he was outfitted with, and they interfaced seamlessly with his own programming. His subs were having a field day with the new information.

“Is it good?” Ghost asked bashfully, like a child with a crayon drawing.

He pulled his hood back up. “It’ll do.”

“Great!” It’s eye flashed relief. “Now, we need to get you to the city where it’s safe.”

Kamon frowned, then remembered he had a new visor. “There are no safe cities. I’ve been to dozens.”

“Then you haven’t been to The City.” Ghost replied. “It is safe. The Traveler protects it.”

That was a word Kamon never expected to hear again. “It’s still here?” He asked. “It hasn’t left after all?”

“It is why I am here, and why you are here.” Kamon’s subs hungered for information. No part of him was eager to decipher cryptic messages.

“Explain.” He demanded.

Ghost bobbed thoughtfully, in no way bothered by his chilly tone. “The Traveler is wounded, and so it created the Ghosts, like myself. Our task is to search the Earth and beyond for our Guardians, those with the ability to wield the Traveler’s light as a weapon, and defend us all from the Darkness. You are one such Guardian.”

Geez the thing was good with words. Truly inspiring. He sarcastically logged all the ‘saving the universe’ stuff as a secondary objective. His subs cackled with approval.

He still had a primary objective. Save the wife.

He glanced down at the Awoken man. He had been reaching for something, but there was nothing around for him to be grasping at.

That seemed as good a direction to start as any. His subs calculated the direction and set a mental path. They communicated with his new helmet and a line appeared, an actual line superimposed over his forward sensors’ imaging. He could get used to this.

“The city is more north of that trajectory.” Ghost’s voice came through his helmet audio, louder, more personal. Kamon looked around for the thing but didn’t see it.

“Where did you go?” He spun around looking for it.

“I’m still with you, in the armor systems.” He appeared in a tiny shower of light in front of the Exo. “I can remain manifested if that makes you more comfortable.”

“Nah.” Kamon dismissed it quickly. “Doesn’t matter, just curious was all.” In truth, he was getting used to having another being to speak to.

Ghost made his shrugging movement and vanished again. “I’ll modify your waypoint-”

“Don’t.” Kamon ordered. “I know where I’m going.”

“That’s not the City.”

“No, it’s not. Not yet.”

“Where are we going then?” We. He distinctly heard we. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

“I’m going that way.” He said stiffly, and started off walking.

“But what is there?” Ghost sounded exasperated, it’s vocal nuances amplified by the intimacy of its home in his helmet. “Look, if I know maybe i can help, make the waypoint less glaring, something.”

“I don’t know what’s there. But it’s where I need to go. There’s someone I have to find, and they’re that way.”

“Very well then…I will be with you the whole way. Wherever you must go, go.”

That made him freeze. Made him pause and think. He decided, in that moment, the little Ghost guy might not be so bad.


	4. Chapter 4

Kamon’s subs had thought that finding a single woman on the entire continent, even the planet, would be difficult. Perhaps even impossible. They were wrong.

Evidently Awoken had an excellent sense of direction in relation to their kin. He had walked barely an hour in the direction the body had been pointing him in, before he was attacked by a pale, screaming wraith with an auto rifle.

She got off a few wild shots before the rifle jammed. A stunned expression flashed across her face but at least she had the sense not to try to fire again. Kamon took the pause in her attack to holster the hand cannon he had been carrying. He held out his hands, low with the palms out, trying to look as nonthreatening as an armor-clad cape-shrouded killer robot could.

The woman wasn’t buying it. She loosened her grip on the weapon and repositioned her hands. She drew back as if she was going to swing it.

“Hey, I’m not-”

She hit him, she actually hit him. He hadn’t expected it at all. The butt of the rifle clocked him hard in the shoulder before he could properly brace himself, and he stumbled back a few steps. It was actually enough to to set off potential damage alarms. His equivalent of pain.

She swung again with an animal shout. This time he was quicker and grabbed the weapon around the middle.

“Hey, hush up!” He hissed. “Want the whole valley to hear you?”

His tone stunned her for a moment, then she hardened her face again and wrenched the rifle away. She stood stock-still, judging him.

“Want me to fix the jam?” Kamon offered, palms up and out.

“I’m not handing over my only weapon.” She snarled.

He jerked a thumb at the rifle on his own back. “Trade you then?”

The wife -it was her, right?- brandished the gun like a club. “Leave your guns where they are.”

Kamon flashed his palms, trying to be nonthreatening. This definitely had to be her, it had to be. Damn how did he break the news? ‘Oh hey lady I think your husband is dead.’

“I’m not here to hurt anyone.” He said.

“Take your helmet off.” She demanded. Kamon hesitated, he was starting to like that thing actually.

“Is that necessary?”

“I cannot read your face. I can’t trust you.”

Kamon’s jaws whirred, an exasperated sigh by his standards. “Lady, you won’t be able to read my face anyway, I swear. Not unless you can read lights.”

A quick, confused narrowing of her eyes followed that remark, but she was adamant. “Take it off.”

He was thoroughly exasperated, but his way of displaying it was through contortion of his facial plates and patterns of his lights. Both of which were covered at the moment. He stared at her, unmoving, for a few moments, intending to argue, but gave up. Maybe she would listen when she saw for herself his helmet didn’t matter.

He raised his hands slowly and flicked away his hood. His currently invisible Ghost helpfully released the seals on his helmet, allowing him to slide it smoothly off.

To the wife’s credit, she did not let more than her eyebrows slip in her deadpan expression.

“You are inhuman.”

“In more ways than I’m willing to admit at the moment, yes.”

“Do not riddle with me.”

“Right, sorry, I hate when people do that to me.” He shot a glare off to the side, hoping the Ghost got the message. It made no acknowledgment, and neglected to appear. He returned his attention to her.

“I am Kamon. I’m looking for someone. I think… I am afraid it may be you.”

“Afraid?”

Kamon averted his gaze. How to even begin? He caught sight of the pillaged shotgun hanging at his hip. He kept one eye on the woman as he reached for it. “Don’t freak out, I’m not gonna hurt you.”

She aimed her rifle at him.

“It’s jammed.” He reminded her. She snarled at him.

“Just… look.” He held the shotgun out in his hands, just holding it, like an offering.

She only had to take one glance before tears came to her eyes.

Both of the guns ended up on the ground. She dropped her rifle. He dropped the shotgun to catch her as she sank. She didn’t pull from the contact, just sobbed into his cloak. The woman didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands, they clutched her chest and her head, clutched at his cloak, wrapped around him, pulling herself closer. She raised a fist and hit him once, crying out as it contacted the metal armor over his shoulder. He wrapped one of his own, much larger hands around it to keep her from hurting herself any further. She settled into his arms after that, no longer moving just sobbing, sobbing.

“I’m sorry.” He said. “I wasn’t fast enough.” He didn’t want to say it had been the man’s own fault, that he had stood from cover and gotten hit by a tracking plasma pulse. He didn’t need to say that. She didn’t need to hear that.

“Do those who killed him still live?” She asked in a husky whisper, grasping at a breath between hiccups.

“No. They are dead.”

“Good.” She spat. “Good.” A silence, the only movement the expanding and contracting of her lungs. He moved his arms micrometers with her so his metal joints and bones wouldn’t constrict her.

“Anders and Ejiro?” She asked. Names, they must have been.

“There were three bodies.” He said. She shuddered.

“His children must never know.” She murmured to herself. “I’ll tell his mother when they are asleep.”

“Are there many of you? Many survivors?” Kamon asked. “I only mean well.” He added hurriedly, just in case.

“Not many, no longer.” The wife whispered. “And not any for much longer now.”

He knelt still for eight seconds, making a decision and weighing options. Technically his mission could be considered complete. She was safe, but…

The woman seemed to have recovered. Kamon let his arms relax and she shifted away from the embrace. They knelt beside each other in brooding silence.

“I know the way to the City beneath the Traveler.” He said finally. “I can guide you. If you will allow it.” His Ghost blipped in approval in the back of his mind.

She looked at him in disbelief. “The golden city? Where the walls protect?”

“I… That I don’t know. I have never been there. I only have the coordinates of it’s location. What is actually there, I can’t be sure.”

“Hope is hope.” She said and stood. He followed suit.

“I can fix your jam now.” He offered. She considered it for a moment, then nodded. He picked up both weapons from the ground and handed the shotgun to her. When she looked at it forlornly he wondered if that was the right thing to do.

Kamon took up her rifle. An ancient russian model, with an impressive number of dings and scratches. He gave it a once over before ejecting the magazine. He held it up to her and asked: “Do you have another?”

She nodded and produced two spares from her waistband.

“Just one, thanks.” He removed the round that had jammed from the chamber and slid home a new magazine. She watched him earnestly, eyeing each movement he made. He resolved to teach her about her weapon when they had the time.

“I’m Kamon.” He said again.

“Cahaya. Why do you help us?”

He cocked the rifle. “He told me to protect you.” He lifted it and aimed for a knot on a tree. “I’m going to test fire.”

She flinched when he pulled the trigger, a few rounds peppering the bark. When a Fallen howl echoed in the hills, she did not. He kicked himself for the stupidity, of course something might have heard.

“I have to return to the children.”

He passed her the rifle back and unslung his own from his back. He scooped his helmet from the ground and put it back on. “Lead. I won’t let them get you.”

She nodded grimly and darted for the woods. He followed close behind.

She moved quickly but uncertainly. Didn’t know the land. She paused and glanced at rocks, trees, stumps. Looking at landmarks. Finally she seemed assured and broke into a jog, sacrificing silence for speed. Every so often she would glance back at him. He suspected he was a strange large force over her shoulder, something she was still uncertain about.

They rounded a pile of boulders and there were suddenly three humans in front of him. An elderly woman and two children, a boy of four or five and a girl not much older. They all had dark skin Kamon envied.

“We need to get moving.” Cahaya was immediately at the woman’s side, helping her to her feet. “This man knows the way to the Golden City. He will guide us.”

Ghost helpfully pulled up it’s waypoint. He could feel it radiating pride.

“Where is da?” The girl asked. “And Uncle Anders and Uncle Adi?”

“They will meet us there. It may be a long time but we will see them again.” Cahaya said.

“It’s where mum is?” Asked the little boy.

“Yes. Yes, da is going to wait with mum. We will see them soon.” She reached out an arm and drew the boy close, kissing the top of his head. “Soon.”

Kamon climbed the rocks and surveyed the landscape. The organics didn’t have waypoints as he did, and there were still Fallen nearby. He had to handle them. Trees were the dominant feature, but south of them was a lake, with one tall dead tree overshadowing the rest of the forest.

“Cahaya.” He called, and held a hand out to help her up. He pointed to the lake. “Get to the shore, wait beneath the tallest tree. I’ll follow a ways behind you. I won’t let anything catch you.”

“Swear it?” She whispered, eyes locked on the glittering water in the distance.

His words caught for a moment, searching for something worthy to swear by. There was no religion he followed, no philosophy he held dear enough to have that spiritual weight. Life was now meaningless, or rather, life in regards to death, in the wake of this Ghost’s arrival.

He realized he had never sworn before, never needed to. Objectives were objectives, and they would be accomplished whether he wanted to or not.

“I don’t know how.” Kamon finally said. “What is of value to you?”

Cahaya considered him a moment, then turned her face sharply to the sky. She jabbed a finger at a point in the dotted sky. “That star. Third down from the left of the brightest. It was my love’s star. Swear by him.”

“Alderamin.” He said. She narrowed her eyes at the word. “Of the constellation Cepheus. That’s it’s name.”

“It is his star.” She said firmly, and that was final.

“Then I swear it on that star.” He said. “I swear on him.”


	5. Chapter 5

The night passed swiftly, but there was a perpetual tension Kamon had never felt before. As he tailed the family of refugees -covering their tracks with leaves, masking their scents with pine and other plants, and creating other conflicting paths for their enemies to find in the underbrush- he felt their pull. Sometimes they moved so well he feared he had lost them to the forest, only to find a snapped branch and be strangely reassured.

It was the responsibility that he suddenly held, he was sure of it. It had been decades for him, chronologically centuries, since he had last held another’s life in his hands. To now hold four was a shock he met with gritty persistence.

Once, the Fallen had gotten near. Once, he heard the breath of a Dreg close to the brush where he lay in wait. Once, he rose, a black shadow in his new armor, and slit it’s throat and threw his new Ghost-crafted knife into the windpipe of it’s Vandal companion. Once, he opened fire on a band of them, and his bullets ripped the silence to shreds and his first thought was not on his survival or the satisfaction of killing or worry over his levels of ammunition or gear. It was with the women and children, hoping they would not fear, hoping they would not falter. They just had to keep moving.

The moon was setting when he reached the tree. He walked tall and made ample noise as not to surprise them. Cahaya’s glowing face emerged like a spirit from behind the trunk of the ancient tree. Her hands were like lanterns on the rifle she held.

“Safe.” He said. “No one has tailed you for two hours.”

She flashed her eyebrows skyward for a fraction of a second but seemed to relax. She sank, visibly tired. “Here we rest, then. While we can.”

Kamon nodded to the horizon over the lake, lightening slowly. “It will be dawn soon.”

“Yes. We sleep the day. Our enemies hunt at night, so at night we run. When they do not, we rest.” It was sound logic, something to expect from a survivor.

“Very well. I do not need sleep, I will watch until you are ready to move again.”

Cahaya looked prepared to argue, but her freshly apparent exhaustion seemed to get the better of her. She nodded and blinked slowly, thankfully. Slinging her rifle, she rustled through the nearby undergrowth and pulled out a large, dead, leafy branch. She dragged it to the trunk and propped it against a bulging root many feet high. It formed a sad-looking screen, that the children promptly crawled behind. Cahaya followed them, and the three settled as comfortably as they could in the sand.

The elderly woman wrapped her shawl around her and sat just outside the shadow of the leaves, leaning against the mottled trunk. “Don’t give me that look.” She said, though he had given her no look whatsoever. “I don’t need as much rest as I used to, I’ll be just fine young man.”

He faltered with a response, somewhat amused by her assumptions of who and what he was. He elected for a simple nod of respect before moving to find a decent vantage point.

In the end he took a post atop one of the great roots, his gun across his knees and his back against the earthy trunk. The left side of his face was to the lake and the light, his right the misting forest. There was a calmness in the land at sunrise, a solidity in the sun and the wind and the quiet humming song emitting from the old woman on the other side of the trunk.

The old woman’s song faded as the sun rose and burned off the stars. He let his internal warmers rest, the sun keeping him at running temperature. His primary systems stayed on alert, but he let the rest of his mind wander.

How many sunrises had he seen? Hundreds, thousands, more he could not recall. Eight lives he’d lived, was in the middle of the ninth. He realized the irony in that. Did that death -alleged death- he’d undergone count as a rest? His subs still only logged 8, so perhaps not. It felt different in a way. After a reset there were only glimpses, snippets. He understood they were from the previous iteration of himself, and not much beyond that. When he was fresh and prone, he had to gather the pieces back up again and figure out who he was, and what he was doing.

Kamon had time, now, time to think. His last reset had been only three months ago. He might as well give processing the pieces another shot. He hadn’t had downtime like this in a long time and might not again.

His last life he had been surviving. Just trying to not die out here. He had too much excitement in a short time, pushed himself too far, thought he could keep going, and overloaded. He wasn’t particularly sure what had done it, what he had been doing. That was the scary part of a non-trauma reset. You had no idea what your limit was. You had surpassed it, and your mind wiped itself to protect you. It could have been anything from a week long battle with no rest to a sudden sharp influx of data, too much to process.

He had known when he woke from the reset that he had not experienced external trauma, there were no scars, none he didn’t faintly recall as familiar. There was a gun in his hands but why not have a gun in his hands. To be weaponless, in this economy? He chuckled to himself, not knowing where the thought had come from but knowing his mind enjoyed it for one reason or another.

He knew the Fallen. Recognized their breeds and builds by arbitrary names. Had he named them or had someone else? He didn’t know. But he knew the sounds of their ships, the sounds of their shouts.

The sounds of their screams.

He knew of the Traveler. It was out there somewhere, a silent protector. He wanted to find it, and yet he didn’t. He did not understand this contradiction. Further thoughts had been lost.

He knew, instinctively about the weapons he carried and how to operate them and how to care for them. He knew, also, that they were archaic and dreadfully hazardous. He knew all about himself, the sensors he had, what they did, optimal operating temperatures and his maximum speeds in movement and thought and how to optimize both.

He knew he craved an objective. Somewhere in his programing was a hole where there had been one. An overarching purpose. It was lost somehow, somewhen. Not in his last reset but before, maybe many ago, maybe few.

He heard a noise and jolted from his thoughts. He rose to a crouch on the root, gun in his hands, alert and waiting. When it came again however, he relaxed. It was one of the children, speaking softly in their sleep. He settled back down, pleased at the safety of his people, and his reaction time.

He glanced their way again and suddenly knew his purpose. He was aware of his standing objective.

As the Ghost had said, he was a Guardian.

Their sixth night together was approaching. He stood by the crook in the rocks where his band of survivors slept, watching the sunset in the distance, when his sensors picked up a low rumbling from behind them. He unslung his rifle and turned, scanning for a disturbance. The noise grew louder, and he feared a rockslide for a moment, but it didn’t sound right. Didn’t fit auditory blueprints for a Fallen Skiff either. It was only when a rust-brown arrowhead of a ship thundered overhead that he remembered. Human. Ally. Had to be. He hadn’t seen a working human ship in years but it was reminiscent of ones he’d known decades ago.

Cahaya was at his shoulder, still waking from deep sleep, but fearful. “What was that sound?” She hissed.

“Human ship.” He said. “Set down just around the ridge over there.”

“We must be close to the City if there are ships. Why did it land?”

“Don’t know.” He replied, and realized she may be right in worrying. Another blip of fear came with the war-scream of a Fallen Vandal -or worse, a Captain- from behind them. Cahaya stiffened.

“Wake the children,” he said. “We move now.”

“Are we going to that ship?” She asked incredulously.

“It’s on our way, can’t hurt. If we can get a ride with whoever it is, we won’t have to travel like this anymore.”

“And what if they are bandits who try to harm us? What if they are not from the City? What if they are not kind?”

He didn’t pause a beat. “Then I will kill them and take the ship and get you all to safety” Cahaya blinked in surprise. It was obviously not something she had considered him being capable of. She composed herself, made a grim nod, and turned to gather the children.

He was helping the old woman to her feet when the other Guardian arrived.

His sensors determined motion, but it was his own built-in ones, not the ones in his helmet. He spun and aimed, alarmed that he hadn’t known sooner something was approaching.

“Relax.” His Ghost breathed through their link. “Ally.”

He was too on edge to listen or care, but when the woman sauntered from the woods he paused.

“Helloooo there soldier.” She cocked her hip and flicked her head. If she had hair it probably would have swished back over her shoulder, but her smooth plated helmet didn’t move like that. She wore thick magenta robes, formed by a pair of joined panels that split high on her thigh. It looked like she was in an provocative evening gown, only it was complemented by armor plated gauntlets, thick fieldweave pants, combat boots, and a belt of ammo pouches. Her gauntlets were bright as sunlight and a weird band on her arm was on fire, like literally burning. She had a weapon strapped on her back but carried none in her hands.

“Um.” Was all he replied with. His Ghost settled uncomfortably in his gut.

“Nevermind, I don’t like her.” It whispered in his head. “She’s weird.”

“Oi.” She stuck her hands to her hips. “I can feel you blushing Ghost. Control your light, you’ve got a Gunslinger here. Veeeeery emotional.”

“Excuse me?” Kamon whirred in annoyance.

The woman whirred back, snaking her head mockingly. She was an Exo too then. “You’re proving my point here soldier boy.”

Cahaya nudged his back and glared at the newcomer. “Do you know her?”

The lady Exo gave a sidelong glance at the Awoken. “Whoops, sorry, didn’t realize you were taken. Oh what a bleeding heart you are soldier boy, in love with a mortal.” Cahaya gasped in offense and stalked forward.

“We don’t have time for this.” Kamon grabbed her arm. His sensors were beginning to detect motion. “We need to get moving, let’s go.”

“Fine, we’ll talk later. You all run ahead, I’ll handle the Fallen.” She flicked her wrist and a Ghost appeared, dark scarlet shell, blinking expectantly. That explained a lot actually. It meant she was a Guardian too. He was beginning to assume everything connected to these Ghosts was crazy.

“G, coords of the ship? We’ll give the darlings a lift.” She turned to look directly at Kamon, suddenly serious. “Two klicks due east. Get moving soldier.” A stubby rifle materialized in her hands.

“This way, come on.” He picked up the little boy and girl, one in each arm. If the exo lady wanted to shoot for them he’d let her, and take full advantage of her help. Cahaya followed suit, slinging her weapon on her back and putting an arm under the older woman’s.

A shank came speeding out of the trees. The Guardian didn’t aim her weapon. Instead, she threw out a palm and it exploded into a rain of sparks and flames.

“Witch!” Cahaya hissed, witnessing the act.

The woman laughed, loud and strong. “No, my dear. Warlock.”


	6. Chapter 6

She was back from the fight before they reached her ship. She strode out of the dark woods a ways downhill, looked up at them and paused, then carried on towards the waiting vessel.

“She intends to leave us behind.” Cahaya hissed.

“Just keep moving.” Kamon told her.

The Guardian was waiting for them in a clearing by the opened ramp of her ship. Her Ghost was blinking something at her that he couldn’t read from this angle. When the little band approached it vanished in a shower of sparks.

Cahaya glared, not at all pleased with the mysterious new woman helping them.

The lady exo jerked her head at Kamon in the direction of the ship. He obeyed the gesture and walked up the ramp, the children in his arms looking around wide-eyed and dumbfounded.

He heard her stop Cahaya and the elder woman.

“Please don’t be afraid.” She said quietly. “I’m going to help you get to the city. You’ll be safe there. The Traveler protects us all.”

“Is that the truth?”

“I swear it on my order, my Vanguard, my bond.” Words that meant nothing to him and must have meant nothing to the awoken woman, but words with such gravity she must have felt it.

“Thank you.” She said.

“It’s my honor.”

They followed him into the ship, past the tiny cargo hold and a hallway with a single bunk bolted to the wall. He set the children down there.

She brushed past him and opened the cockpit. There was a single pilot’s seat that she spun around, helping the elderly woman sit down. Cahaya also settled in the cockpit, on the floor leaning against the back wall.

“You all should hold onto something back there.” The Warlock cautioned, punching a string of commands into the computer. “Can you hit the door soldier boy?”

He gave her a distinctive whirr of distaste, then glanced around and found a panel on the wall that looked right. “Blue button?”

“That’s the one.” He slapped it and the ramp lifted. “Thanks hon.”

Kamon stalked up to the cockpit doorway. “Could you lay off the nicknames?”

He was returned a dramatic sigh. “If I must.” Then more seriously. “Make sure the children are sitting down.”

He went back to the bunk and put a hand and gentle pressure on the little boy who had been excitedly bouncing at a height that nearly had him hitting his temple on the bulkhead.

“Hold on.” She commanded again and he grabbed a bar on the wall and locked his joints. The ship lurched forward and the children squealed with excitement and clutched at each other.

When the motion had balanced out and he felt he could walk, he moved to look into the cockpit and found the exo woman standing at the controls with her stance wide and hands hovering over the panels. The old human woman watched her with restrained curiosity, and Cahaya from the floor at the back of the cockpit with lingering suspicion.

“You’re ah… a Guardian?” He asked, confident enough in his assumption that it probably didn’t need to be a question, but unsure if it was proper or not to assume.

“Same as you.” She said, cocking her head in his direction but not yet giving him her full attention. Cahaya’s gaze shifted to him. He felt it like a laser.

“I mean, maybe, sort of, by definition.” He stuttered. “But I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that classification.”

His Ghost bubbled with annoyance and conveyed something like “I could tell you” through their link.

She turned her whole body to look at him. “Wear it as a badge of honor, Guardian.”

It warmed him to hear her say that, in a weird way. He felt proud. She huffed in an amused fashion as if she knew how he was feeling, and turned to survey the women.

“You doing alright?” The older woman smiled warmly from her chair and nodded. Cahaya gave a curt nod as well but still stared at the side of Kamon’s helm. He gave it a moment, and when her attention did not appear to waver, he walked over to her and sat down beside her.

“What is it?”

“What is what?”

“You are very obviously upset. What do you want me to do about it?”

“Nothing.” She crossed her arms over her knees. She glanced at the woman across the small room, then pretended to look around at nothing in particular. Kamon didn’t stop watching her, waiting. With a sigh, she finally stood and made for the back room, beckoning him to follow. He felt the gaze of the exo woman on his back as he moved to leave as well. He wished all of them would just speak their mind instead of dragging him around in strange circles of body language.

Cahaya stood at the open doorway between the cargo hold and the small bunk room. She stared at the closed hatch in the angled wall before them. The engines thrummed more loudly here, but the sound of the wind was nonexistent. The whole vessel was sealed for exoatmospheric travel. He could tell.

“You trusted her so immediately. Why?” Cahaya demanded suddenly, her head tilted at him in an accusatory fashion.

“You trusted me with equal speed.”

“No.” She countered. “Perhaps quickly but I stayed guarded, I am still guarded.”

He rested against the other side of the doorframe, folding his arms across his chest. The children in the background chattered quietly and excitedly, sitting across from each other on either end of the bunk. They were amused by the sheet and thin blanket on it, hiding their faces behind and beneath it, giggling with glee when they glimpsed one another through the tunnel of cloth.

“You mean to imply I am not still guarded too?” He asked her, meeting her gaze with his helmet’s faceplate. She swallowed, and seemed slightly uncomfortable. He continued. “You want reasons? She is much like me. That is why.”

“Guardians.” Cahaya tested the word, waving her hand frustratedly.

“Yes.” He confirmed. “Not only that but yes. I don’t know what it means exactly but I know we are supposed to protect people.”

“Supposed to.” She repeated icily. He felt a pang of pity, of shame.

“Yes.” He said again. “And on top of that she is an Exo as well.” He curled the fingers of one hand into a fist and relaxed them, feeling the bend of the joints and the smoothness of the motion. “You saw my face. That is what an Exo is. We are machines created for war, all of us. Though I have not met her, and there is always the chance that I have and do not remember, she is a comrade in arms despite whatever this Guardian business is and yes, that means I trust her.”

Cahaya glanced back as if she could catch a glimpse of their pilot. “You are sure?”

He nodded once, deftly. “It’s in her voice and her movement and her emotion. It is not hard to detect if you know what to look for. As I obviously do. I don’t know what will happen when we get to the city, but I trust her to get us that far.”

She curled her lip. “I still don’t-”

“Hey.” He said, quiet, calm. “You said when we met you couldn’t trust me because you couldn’t read my face. Behind that helmet, you won’t be able to read hers either.” He nodded back towards the cockpit. “So maybe, try trusting on actions?”

She looked back as well. She wet her lips and shuffled her folded arms a little. “Perhaps.” She finally said, and walked down the thin hall to rejoin the other women.

Kamon allowed himself to gloat in a moment of victory for diffusing the situation. Emotions were such an unnecessary hassle. How had humanity as a species, himself, his kind, and the Awoken included in that, even survived this long? Only because of people like him, the mediators, surely. He had not signed up for this job.

“We’ll be approaching the city soon.” The Warlock reported when he returned to the cockpit. “First stop will be just inside the West Gate, refugee drop, then I’ll take you on to the tower to meet the Vanguard and get situated.”

“Sorry?” He said, glancing at the two survivors beside him, and the children in the back room. “We’ll be splitting up?”

“Well, yes.” She said, as if it shouldn’t be a surprise. “Anyone entering the city goes through placement. They spend a short while at the camp by the entry gate, until they can be found a home. You, however, are a Guardian. You have to log at the tower, register your Ghost’s signature, put in for a ship, get some basic gear loadout…” She waved a hand to express more to the growing list, then paused and looked him over as if it was her first time seeing him. “Though your Ghost did an impressive job on the armor, rare for them to get your first set so detailed, so personalized.”

Through their link, he felt a swell of pride. “He thanks you for that, I think.” He told her. She chuckled.

“A shy one huh? You’re alright here Little Light.”

To Kamon’s surprise, his Ghost materialized hesitantly beside him. It surveyed the whole room, blinking at each of the women, then drifting over towards the Warlock. She reached up a palm and for a moment he thought she was going to touch it and felt an inexplicable rush of fear. Her hand froze a foot to the side of it. “It’s alright.” She said, and from the space above her palm her own Ghost emerged. The two flashed rapidly at each other, rear geometry spinning and frontal points narrowing and expanding in some language far more complex than exo mechanical. The Guardian seemed disinterested, leaning back on the front console and glancing over her shoulder out the window.

“There it is.” She said, voice quiet like a breath. She offered a hand to Cahaya. “Would you like to come see?”

The Awoken woman’s brow furrowed, but she walked forward anyway. She stretched up, her hand against the tilted glass of the viewport, and peered out. Kamon sidled up behind them, staying respectfully back but craning his neck to get a look at the City. He didn’t notice it immediately, thought he was staring at a white sky over a cityscape, but some odd geometry caught his eye and he realized it was a sphere, a massive sphere.

Cahaya pressed herself closer to the glass. “That is it? That’s the Traveler?”

“Mhm.” The Warlock nodded.

Kamon hesitantly put a supporting hand on Cahaya’s back, between her shoulder blades. Her tiptoe leaning looked a little precarious. He felt her spine stiffen initially, but she sank into the support, ducking her head to get a better angle on the view.

“Thank you.” She murmured to the glass.

The ship came down in a compound just inside the wall. There were other landing pads stretching out beside theirs, a few occupied, all by small jumpships of various shapes and colors. The Warlock opened the ramp and strolled down to speak to the woman standing at the corner of their square of asphalt. Kamon noted the way both of the women’s shoulders were squared. The new one was militia, most likely, and he wasn’t sure what a Guardian counted as. They were warriors, for sure, but soldiers as well? He suddenly found a divide between the definitions of the two words.

This one was an Exo, though. Same as him, so she had been a soldier once at least. How many lives she’d lived between now and then, he couldn’t predict.

Cahaya and the others trickled out of the ship, hesitant. The children gaped at the Traveler hanging low above them. They shouted to each other and pointed, giddy with curiosity.

The militia lady looked up at their band of survivors. She and the Warlock headed back in their direction. Kamon stepped up to stand at Cahaya’s shoulder.

“We’re here.” He said.

“You kept your promise.” She replied, eyes still on the machine in the sky.

“So I did.” He said, trying to be light, humours. It certainly got her attention, she glared at him for a fraction of a second, but then smiled. It was actually very pretty.

“I am grateful.” She said. The militia lady stopped in front of them.

“Hello, welcome.” Her voice was musical, and not english, not anything he recognized, but something he understood. “Please follow me to registration. It could take a few days to find placement for you in the city. You’ll stay in the registration camp until we can.”

She looked down at the children. “Is there a chance you have family here?”

“Yes! We are meeting my mum and da!” The little girl piped, shamelessly excited. Cahaya sucked in a quick breath, and the child looked up at her. “Right?”

“Thats…” She stumbled. The human woman noticed her hesitance and looked at Kamon and the old lady for explanation. Kamon subtly shook his head. He wasn’t sure about their mother, but since Cahaya had told them their mother and father were together… it was safe to assume. The militia lady’s eyes flickered, then she gave a curt nod.

“Non-reunification then.” She said, quietly. The meaning of the words evidently went over the children’s heads. It occurred to him she probably had to go through this a lot. Had to ask hard questions and bring up pain. Thankfully, the children were distracted again.

“Your voice is funny.” The little boy said. The lady smiled at them. It seemed just a bit hollow.

“Please, follow me.” She gestured away, inviting the little band towards a building near the end of the line of landing pads. Cahaya picked up the little boy in her arms. When Kamon moved to follow though, there was a hand on his shoulder. He knew it was her by the warmth emanating from her gauntlets.

“Ah, ah, ah, soldier boy.” She patted him on the back. “You’re with me.”

“Oh.” He said. “Right.”

Cahaya looked over her shoulder at him. “Thanks.” She said.

“Yeah. Good luck.” He replied. She chuckled.

“Good luck to yourself Guardian.”

His jaw opened and closed a little, his mind wanted to reply but he wasn’t sure how. She couldn’t have known, his helmet was still on. She turned away again, and that was the last he saw of them.

“Ya did good.” The Warlock said, giving him another pat and turning to walk up the ramp of the ship. He wasn’t sure what to say to that either.

“I know.” He replied, finally, long after she had entered the cockpit, out of earshot. He stood alone on the asphalt looking up at the great sphere in the sky.

“What am I doing here?” He asked it. “Why?”

A soft sound and movement at his shoulder.

“You’ll figure it out.” His ghost said, blinking at him. “They all do. Most Guardians are confused at the start, you’ll find a purpose.”

“Thanks.” He said. Behind him, the jumpship’s engines spooled up. He heard a ping and a circle appeared on his his hud.

“Chop chop, soldier boy.” The Warlock sang through a comms channel. He whirred and tried to figure out how to close the channel.

“Ghost?” He finally said and the circle disappeared with another ping.

“I’m learning how your requests feel.” It said. It’s intrusiveness didn’t bother him as much as it had before. It was beginning to feel symbiotic. Safe. He headed up to the ramp of the ship.

“Think my ‘purpose’ has anything to do with her?” He asked, the woman in the cockpit coming into view.

His Ghost said, “I think that’s up to you.”


End file.
